WATERSPLASH AT ITCHEN STOKE
Perhaps the prettiest reach of the river Itchen—and that is saying a good deal—lying between Itchen Stoke and Ovington. The road between them crosses the main stream in a delightful ‘watersplash.’
there met a violent death. Prince Henry, his younger brother, with his followers had spurred into the city bringing the tidings, had seized the Royal Treasure, and had summoned the Witan to pronounce him king. Meanwhile the Red King’s body, alone and untended, lay weltering in blood on the spot where he had fallen, till a charcoal-burner, Purkess by name, travelling along had found it and placed it in his cart, that the poor remains might at least have decent sepulture in the cathedral of the diocese. As the news spread in the city an eager throng gathered and watched the road to await the sorry funeral cortège, as it made its mournful way, probably along the road from Compton through the south gate, and so into the old monastery. The interment took place the very next day, right under the tower—“on the Thursday he was slain, and on the morning after buried”; and when a few years later the Norman tower fell upon the tomb, men said it was the Red King’s crimes and not structural weakness that had occasioned the fall. His bones were transferred later on to one of the mortuary chests on the side screens of the choir, but popular tradition still points to a tomb beneath the tower as the tomb where he was originally buried, and speaks of it as Rufus’s Tomb.
And now, with Henry on the throne, Winchester resumed its former political importance. Henry reunited the Norman provinces to England, and the old activity of intercourse across the seas was resumed. But more than that, Henry identified himself with the city more closely than any king has ever done before or since. His romantic marriage with the Saxon princess Eadgyth, of Romsey Abbey, grand-daughter of Edmund Ironside, made him popular, and after his marriage he and his queen—the good queen Molde the people called her—made Winchester Castle their residence, and here their son William, the ill-fated hero of the White Ship tragedy, was born.
With its old political position restored, and the king reigning and residing here in person, Winchester rose to the zenith of its importance in Norman days.
A number of events of interest are identified with this reign. First and foremost, the birth of Hyde Abbey. Newan Mynstre, the pious offspring of Alfred and Edward the Elder, had since the translation of Swithun’s bones, during Æthelwold’s régime, steadily declined in importance, and its activity had been much hampered. The proximity to the older and more extensive foundation, which eclipsed and overshadowed it in importance, was one cause; another was the cramped nature of the site upon which the New Minster had been erected.
Always small and confined, so close were their respective churches that chanting in one disturbed the devotions in the other. The erection of William the Conqueror’s palace had made matters still worse, and the monks had had to forego a portion of their already over-congested area. Under these circumstances William Giffard, who had succeeded Walkelyn as Bishop of Winchester, obtained from Henry permission to move the monastery to the village of Hyde in the northern suburbs of the city, and here near Danemark Mead, where Guy of Warwick was said to have vanquished Colbrand the Dane, the new structure was commenced. The immediate result was highly satisfactory.
The monks of St. Swithun’s, who also had suffered from the over-close proximity and congestion, as well as from the rivalry of its over-close neighbour, heartily co-operated and granted the site for the new abbey. Old rivalries were allayed, and for a time a spirit of cordiality prevailed, while as a means of raising funds to assist both houses the king’s grant of a three days’ fair was added to, and an extension given for five additional days, making eight altogether.